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UBCM President Trish Mandewo facilitated an interesting discussion with Minister Sean Fraser. Here’s one highlight:
Q: Would you consider working more closely with your colleague, the Minister of Immigration, to ensure that sufficient housing can be built in line with Canada's immigration targets?
A: One of the principles that came out of the Strategic Immigration Review Report was that we should be aligning housing output with immigration levels across the country. It can become a bit of a challenge, because although you can have a serious amount of influence over the immigration levels nationally, once people arrive in Canada, they're free to move to which part of Canada they want to live. So we can try to mirror the levels of housing, productivity and immigration nationally, we can't do it in isolation of local communities. I'm actually confident when I look at the permanent residency levels that we can create the housing output to accommodate a number of people who are coming to Canada permanently.
But we have a unique challenges when it comes to our temporary programs. Permanent residency levels are set annually by the federal government, … but temporary programs are driven by demand, not by a government decision. This is where I think we need to implement reforms. It’s going to take a little bit of time for the to see those numbers gel, given how difficult it is to ramp up housing starts and how other factors are at play, including interest rates.
But to your question, yes, we can work together to align those numbers. And we must and in fact, we have started in that exercise in recent months.
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